Friday, June 19, 2015

Complaining about tourists is a favorite past times here. Sure
their dollars keep our economy running. And yes, I get it. They’re just so awestruck
by rainbows, beaches, and scenery that they have to drive 5 miles below the
speed limit to snap photos instead of pulling over. But, why must they do it
when we’re trying to get to work?

Academics and activists argue that tourism damages the host
culture. The businesses, shows, shops, and industries that have built around
tourists have cheapened the experience of being in Hawaii and are a form of
imperialism, they say. Perhaps, but this isn’t new. More than a hundred years
ago, Maui saw clans of the rowdiest, harshest, and meanest tourists you’d ever
see.

In the mid-nineteenth century, Maui had a savage tourist
industry thanks to whaling. It was no cake walk getting here. Yankee sailors
started out on the Eastern seaboard, usually Massachusetts. From there, it was
due south skirting the shores of the Brazil and Argentina. They’d head west to round
the treacherous Cape Horn between Antarctica and South America in order to
reach the Pacific.

A whaler’s life was rough. The crew was confined to sleeping
in small rooms under the deck. The food was atrocious. Sailors ate salted
meats, hardened biscuits, and used cockroach-infused molasses to sweeten their
coffee.

The tedium was interrupted by the actual whaling part, which
was extremely perilous. When the ship spotted one, whalers would jump into a
small boat, row up to the behemoth, and stick it with harpoons. If you weren’t
thrown from the boat in frothing waters with a massive cetacean, there was the
risk of getting the boat crushed by the whale itself.

And when you finally slayed the beast and got it aboard, the
real work of converting every imaginable piece into some commodity like bones,
oil, blubber, and even meat took days.

Needless to say, by the time ships were within sight of the
West Maui Mountains towering above Lahaina, everyone was ready to get off the
boat. The whalers started coming to Lahaina in the 1820s and continued for
another forty years or so. The town’s banner year was 1846 when 429 whale ships
dropped anchor (only 167 stopped in Honolulu that year). It wasn’t the whales
that attracted them. The port was a much welcomed break and vacation spot.
Arguably, the whalers were Maui’s first tourists—and they were really bad.

Bars and grog shops started popping up. Not only that, but the
ships attracted locals from all over the island to entertain the crews—especially
young women. Promiscuity, booze, and rowdiness ruled the day.

Local chiefs and resident missionaries weren’t happy. They passed
laws prohibiting the sale of liquor, commingling of crews and women, and
jailing offenders. The sailors and the businesses catering to them didn’t care.
A constable complained that there
were so many places to buy booze that he could not “get a fair chance to fine
them.”

Riots ensued. In the early 1820s, the governor of Maui at the
time discovered women snuck aboard an English whaling ship in violation of the laws.
When the captain was ashore, he held him hostage. The captain’s first mate demanded
his released in an hour or else his ship to open fire on the town. He was
released when he promised to return the girls, but the ship fired its cannons
anyway. They were aimed right at the mission house on Front Street. When the
captain returned to the ship the firing stopped and they headed out to
Honolulu. The girls were never returned.

Then there was the time in 1843 when a crew of drunken whalers
tried to kidnap King Kamehameha III, who resided in Lahaina. They were met by angry
locals hurling rocks at them. Their leader was struck to the ground and dragged
over to a nearby fort. A riot broke out. At the docks sailors and locals hurled
rocks and obscenities at each other. Skulls were broken and it’s unclear if
anyone died. It wasn’t until officers with swords showed up before the sailors
started to calm down.

Thankfully, American whaling is over. The discovery of petroleum
in Pennsylvania made the pursuit of sperm oil in whales pointless. The
industrial revolution after the American Civil War finally brought about the
death knell to the industry. These days, our visitors are less fierce. Sure,
tourists speeding down Front Street on mopeds without a helmet, common sense,
and sunscreen are obnoxious, but at least they’re not kidnapping and pillaging.

Much has changed since the riotous nineteenth century, but one
thing remains constant. It’s still against the law to wander the streets and
lanes of Lahaina with a drink. Folks get cited from time to time. The missionaries
would be proud.

Friday, June 5, 2015

Jalisa Jose was on vacation celebrating her twenty-first
birthday. At around two in the morning, she and her girlfriends sat down to
rest along the famous sands of Waikiki Beach. After having a seat, the police
came out of nowhere and cited her for breaking the law. Jose and her friends
were ordered to appear in the Honolulu District Court long after their
vacations would be over. These ladies aren’t alone.

Hawaii News Now reported last month that one in five of the
citations issued for the new anti-homeless law are tourists. The police issue
the citations to anyone they see in the famous park after midnight and late-night
carousing tourists are getting swept up in the dragnet with the homeless.

The irony is just spectacular.

The law was designed to help tourists like Jose enjoy their
vacation and spend money. When it was passed in 2014, then-Councilman Stanley
Chang announced that “the reason we have gone to such extraordinary lengths is
because the homeless issue has impacted residents, visitors and the workers of
Waikiki in a way that existentially threatens the economy of our community.”
Nice one. Tell that to tourists like Jose who get cited on vacation and vow
never to return.

This new crackdown on having a seat is nothing new. It’s another
chapter in Hawaii’s quixotic quest to criminalize being outside.

One summer’s day, the police cited Camelio
Anduha for “loafing or habitually loafing” on Liliha Street in Honolulu. Anduha
went to court and argued that a law criminalizing loafing, loitering, or idling
on the public streets and sidewalks was unconstitutional.

The trial court agreed, but the prosecution appealed. The
Hawaii Supreme Court ruled for Anduha and in doing so proved to be prescient
about Jose’s case:

“Visitors, lured by the fame of our climate and of our natural
scenery and the hospitality of our people, come here for recreation and
pleasure. Many of them, having no other occupation, habitually but harmlessly
idle or loiter upon our streets and highways. In their pursuit of happiness,
which is a guaranteed right, they loiter before shop windows, pause to enjoy
the changing colors of the ocean and to talk with friends. . . . Also, there
are persons who, taking advantage of the leisure they have on the Sabbath,
habitually go for long hikes along the public highways. When weariness
overtakes them they stop for rest. Attracted by the beauties of the landscape
they loiter and idle for as long as they chose. . . . Is the legislature
empowered to declare them lawbreakers?”

The Court struck down the anti-loafing
law. That was in 1930—eighty-five years Jose and her friends got their
citations in Waikiki because they were sitting down on the sand in the middle
of the night.

It was 1970. James Lavin and Craig Grahovac were charged with
a law similar to the territorial anti-loafing law. Both were accused of being a
“person who wanders about the streets at late or unusual hours of the night,
without any visible or lawful business.”

At their trial, the police testified that they were spotted at
1:00 a.m. walking through a part of Ewa Beach on Oahu at a place that where
“youths congregate and sniff paint.” Lavin was incoherent; Grahovac was
disheveled. They were found guilty. Lavin was sentenced to jail for nine
months. Grahovac got six. They both appealed to the Hawaii Supreme Court.

Again the Court struck down the law. Simply put, criminalizing
the act of “wandering” at “late or unusual hours of the night” was too vague to
be constitutionally sound. The Court explained that such the law “subjects a
pedestrian to the unbridled discretion of an officer whose standard for law
enforcement is equally nebulous.”

Forty-five years after Lavin and Grahovac exercised their
seemingly constitutional right to wander around paint-sniffing spots late at
night, the Honolulu City Council has criminalizing the act of sitting or lying
on a sidewalk throughout the city.

This year the Council passed a bill that extended the ban
beyond Waikiki and criminalize sitting and lying on sidewalks all over Oahu.
Mayor Kirk Caldwell, however, vetoed the measure because he feared that it
couldn’t withstand a constitutional challenge. But on Wednesday, the Council overrode
the veto and extended the ban. Now the stage is set for another constitutional
challenge. If history is any guide, Caldwell could be on the right side of
history.

But that’s no consolation for tourists like Jose. She missed
her court date when she flew home. The citation and possible bench warrant has
left a bad taste in her mouth. It will only be a matter of time before the law
gets challenged. Perhaps Jose is the next Anduha or Grahovac.